The Office of the Campus Writing & Communication Coordinator is excited to announce the open application call for the WAC+WID Graduate Scholars Program. This program is similar to the DTEI Pedagogical Scholars Program, where graduate students are given the opportunity to engage in advanced writing pedagogical and professional development in an interdisciplinary community that emphasizes professional and personal support. Acceptance to this program will allow graduate students to engage in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and will include guidance from the Office of the Campus Writing & Communication Coordinator (CWCC), WAC+WID Program, and, potentially, a faculty member in the graduate student’s primary discipline. If accepted into this program, graduate students will collaborate in a cohort over a two-term sequence and will each be awarded $5000 for participating in this program.

Purpose: The WAC+WID Graduate Scholars Program has the following goals: (1) develop, assess, and share writing pedagogical skills and practices; (2) foster an interdisciplinary community of graduate students and faculty focused on supporting undergraduate writing in the disciplines; (3) prepare competitive application and teaching materials for the job market. 

Eligibility: Graduate students who are members of an academic or professional unit that teaches undergraduate students are eligible to apply. We will select a cohort that represents a diverse range of disciplines and perspectives.

Application & Selection Process: As part of the application process, graduate students will be asked to reflect on their experience teaching and writing in their discipline and to identify a pedagogical research question and inquiry project related to writing and undergraduate student learning. Applicants are encouraged to confer with colleagues in their home departments and members of the CWCC, WAC+WID Program, and CEWC to identify promising and feasible inquiry projects that they would learn to create throughout the program. Possible projects might include, but are not limited to:

• Designing and sequencing writing tasks that align with discipline-specific learning goals and assessing their impacts
• Developing, practicing, and assessing strategies for providing students with effective and actionable feedback on their writing
• Designing, implementing, and assessing the effects of writing assignments that utilize multimodal features
• Building, refining, and assessing  collaborative and team-based writing projects
• Developing and assessing pedagogical approaches that support undergraduate student writers with writing about quantitative data and data visualization
• Developing and assessing strategies that support multilingual students in discipline-specific writing contexts
• Developing and assessing  activities that integrate AI (Artificial Intelligence) technologies with undergraduate writing assignments
• Integrating and assessing writing pedagogies that foster equitable, inclusive, and accessible learning environments

Program Activities: Those selected to participate in the WAC+WID Graduate Scholars Program will meet in person as a cohort 6 times over the Winter and Spring Quarter 2024 to work on their projects. Each meeting will last about 2 hours. WAC+WID Graduate Scholars will present a culminating artifact that reflects their project. Artifacts might include a portfolio of new or redesigned teaching materials, a series of blog posts or online teaching resources for the DTEI, CWCC, WAC+WID or CEWC, or an article or conference paper for a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) forum. Graduate Scholars will also be encouraged to use and share their artifacts with colleagues in their home units and, potentially, as part of a future colloquium hosted by theCWCC.

Applications for the WAC+WID Graduate Scholars Program are now closed. The assessment criteria for applications is available here.